How L.A. is Housing Thousands of Homeless Long Before Proposition HHH Units Get Built

New homeless housing to be built using the $1.2-billion bond Los Angeles city voters approved in November may be three to five years in the future.

In the meantime, a program created by Mitchell H. Katz, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, is striving to get thousands of the most debilitated homeless people off the streets sooner.

Using county and private foundation funds, Housing for Health is identifying homeless people who make disproportionate use of county health services and getting them into market-rate housing with intensive case management. It expects to house 10,000 people by the time Proposition HHH begins to turn out new units.